This event testing whether Lib-Labbery can ever be on the cards again turns out to be a test of Lamb-Lammery with the two elected politicians on the panel being Norman Lamb and David Lammy.

Another panelist, Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society, puts it like this: "Some people think we're like Wayne Rooney's wife Colleen trying to put back a relationship back together and others are saying, 'you're mad'." But he says it's worth doing. There is a lot of huffing from the audience at this.

The first up is Richard Grayson, the vice-chair of the Lib Dem federal policy committee who is pushing for his party to make relationships with Labour while party managers execute their current coalition – he's not a fan of what Clegg et al are doing, and his is a name you'll come to hear more and more of.

For it to happen, Grayson says the following four things need to happen:

• Labour must end tribalism (so that's less from John Reid and David Blunkett, he says)

• The Lib Dem party outside government has to start showing coordinated opposition ("Right now our efforts are like the French resistance of 1940: a few random acts of sabotage, very little sustained critique")

• The grass roots must start making friends, making the point that in times past attempts at Lib-Labbery had been attempted by "party elites" and now needs to be attempted by activists: "There needs to be a much better relationship between the two parties," he says

• The two parties must build common cause; he says that's possible if they join forces to critique markets, agitate for greater sustainability, democratise public services and argue that taxes are too low, as is spending."

Norman Lamb, Clegg's chief of staff, of course has a slightly different position. He says he worked for a Labour MP when he left university, spent his adult life trying to defeat Tories and acknowledges for the first time that when coalition negotiations began "I was one who argued that we should explore a coalition with Labour". He's never said that before.

But his speech will be familiar to you if you've heard any Lib Dem cabinet minister rehearsing why they firstly had no choice but to go in with the Tories and why this will be a radical government.

The key thing about his contribution is that he says a future coalition with Labour is possible if they were one day ever able to show they had moved on from the policy platforms of New Labour.

They have got to acknowledge they were wrong on 28 days, ID cards, child detention, asbos, and so on, Lamb says. People around me mutter in agreement. "Will they accept the progressive case for the deficit? There is nothing progressive in burdening future generations. Will they drop rightwing posturing on civil liberties? Will they accept the limitations of top down public services? If they can do that then yes there is every possibility of working with Labour."

Later he is asked why he accepts Andrew Lansley's bolt-from-the-blue health reforms – a shock to all since they were not in the coalition agreement, and the coalition agreement in fact stipulates no top-down reforms. "Inevitably there are compromises," the former health spokesman says.

So to David Lammy. The Labour MP acknowledges that some think his party is too aggressive towards the Lib Dems and is getting more tribal.

"I would certainly put myself in the pluralist quarter of the Labour party but it may be shrinking to 10%. I don't think any one political party has all the ideas. We need to get used to ministers being able to publicly disagree within government." He gets applause for this.

But he goes on to disagree with the idea that Clegg had no choice but to throw in his lot with the Tories. "I disagree with this rewriting of the election result going on. It is my view the leadership of the Liberal Democrats had a choice ... We could have allowed the Tories to form a minority government, the Lib Dems would still have had a tremendous influence.

"When I look at the package that is being proposed ... and I look at my friends, like Simon Hughes – we agree on housing, on youth violence. And I'm always prepared to spend time with Charles Kennedy. When I look at those colleagues squirming, I think, was this a price too much?" The room hisses at this.

The mood on the panel is friendly and conciliatory and the consensus very much that, in five years time, if Labour make an offer, and the Lib Dems like it, then Lib-Labbery is very possible.

But from their different perspectives Lamb and Grayson set out just how much work has to be done to get to that stage. And outside the event a Labour blogger mutters that the Lib Dems could end up with only 11 seats after the next election on current polling (and if they don't get AV through) ... so the whole question could end up being academic.